I’ve been thinking a lot about the holidays and how many people get overwhelmed by them. One of my colleagues laughed as she said:
We go in thinking that we will be rested when we come back in January, but we are more exhausted and need all of January to recover.
Wow! How true is this for many of us?
You start the holiday season by adding more and more to your already full plate. You build expectations in your head about how the holidays should go.
How will I survive the mad rush of things to do? What are all the activities that I should do to make this a memorable holiday? Who do I need to buy gifts for? Who do I need to visit? What do I need to do to finish the year off strong at work? What do I need to do to get ahead of next year?
The list of questions goes on and on and some of us even include: How do I make this a perfect holiday for my family?
Then maybe you start to think a bit further out and what changes you want to make in 2023. What resolution you will take on or intention you will set?
To top it off, the dark cold days and nights of winter fill you with dread.
Oh those dark cold days.
No wonder you are exhausted by the time January comes along.
What would it be like to flip the script a bit?
Create space for what you want the holidays to bring?
What’s beautiful about this time of year is that we are flipping the script on the dark. The Winter Solstice brings us light each and every day from now until June. It is a time to open up and receive that light, but we can’t receive it if we are overwhelmed and filling every part of our lives.
Here’s how I’m flipping the script this year.
First step, letting go of the picture perfect Christmas! You know the ones you see in Hallmark movies. Good bye picture perfect filled with every activity under the sun holiday!
Next, I tackled the practical side of things! Dropped all the non-essentials and obligations. My husband and I sat down and looked at our to-do lists with these two questions in mind:
Does this need to be done the next 3 weeks or can it wait?
Will this enhance our holidays or take away from them?
We dropped a few things of the list. Painting our basement is a perfect example. We had just finished drywalling it a week ago and were about to call painters in to get quotes. When we answered the above question the answer was obvious: NO and Take Away!
Good Bye Painting Basement! We will see to you in 2023.
We also rearranged what it might look like to do other things. Haircuts for each of us usually goes something like this: my husband finds a day for his, I find sometime for my son and I forget all about getting my hair cut. When we answered the above question for this one it was something simple: YES and YES.
Getting a fresh haircut would allow us all to feel a bit more festive, but instead of it being haircuts all over the place and ruining 3 days of time, we put them all on the same day (my son and I are getting ours together at the same location) and are topping it off with a visit to Santa Clause!
But to-do lists are just part of what makes the holiday’s overwhelming, our expectation of all the FUN things we want to do adds to the madness. Ice skating, museum going, gathering with friends, gathering with family, sledding (if there is snow), watching movies, baking cookies, going to the theatre, seeing the windows decorated downtown – the list could go on and on and on.
The perfect Holidays usually has me wanting to DO ALL THE THINGS!
This year I took a step back and asked my husband what two fun things do we want to indulge in during this time. We choose: going to the Shedd Aquarium and walking our neighborhood to look at the lights. We picked days next week to enjoy these with space between them for all of us to relax and rest.
With the practical side taken care of, it is now time for me to step back and ask myself:
How will I use the space and light that is showing up to cultivate connection, reflection, joy, pleasure and fun?
How will I bring those forward each day?
Practices! Yes, I’m taking on some practices to help me cultivate these. What do my practices look like?
- Continue grounding meditation and reflect from this space.
- Dance Parties!
- Spur of the moment tickle fights
- Ask myself – what will allow me to connect to joy, pleasure and fun today?
What about you?
What would it look like to flip the script on your holidays this year?